


One Lie Too Many (The Self-Respect Pilot Remix)

by samidha



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Jessica Moore Lives, POV Jessica Moore, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, The pairing is in the background, gen-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-23
Updated: 2011-04-23
Packaged: 2018-12-11 11:17:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11713290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/samidha
Summary: In which there is Jess and she is observant and deeply frustrated.





	One Lie Too Many (The Self-Respect Pilot Remix)

**Author's Note:**

> My personal favorite canon for a Jess Lives scenario was always in Growing the Family Business (a fic I wrote years ago) but this is also plausible and maybe healthier for her.

She knows as soon as she sees him. Her window is open, the window of _her apartment_ is open and a stranger stands in the middle of the room and a shiver goes down her spine.

”Wait. Your brother Dean?”

She heard him ask for a drink, the words flitting past her radar and resolving belatedly into something that makes sense. Is he drunk? Does he think this is some kind of prank? What the hell has to be wrong with a man to break into an apartment like this, stone cold sober?

Suddenly she wants to cover up. A burqa would be nice right about now. Or her bathrobe. It’s huge and fuschia but it’s hers and it would get the job done. Whatever it would take to get those eyes off of her.

Except then they’re gone, his attention elsewhere, and she knows she’s been dismissed. Unimportant.

She doesn’t cover up, just stands in the doorway with this man staring Sam down, a whole conversation taking place in looks and she sees--the way years of tension coil in Sam’s muscles, the way he looks at this man--Dean, his brother Dean, finally and out of nowhere--like he has the keys to Sam’s heart.

Like he’s trying to stay indignant, angry, like it lives right under his skin but Dean defuses it with that look in his eye that says _come with me_.

And he will and she knows it and she doesn’t know what to think anymore, because it’s been years and she doesn’t know how to feel. This man--Dean--is not normal. You don’t just desert your family and then come back like this, Oh Dark Thirty with no phone call and no civilized use of a freaking doorbell. You don’t come say hi to people by _breaking in_ to their _home_. 

Suddenly she is so tired. She didn’t sign up for this.

She tries to get Sam to talk to her about it, but he’s in closed-off mode, like he always is about the family he doesn’t really have, like she only stopped seeing him get when she gave up and stopped asking.

But a man broke into her home tonight and she has to ask, she has to.

He brushes her off, kisses her chaste on the cheek and everything is different, everything.

He promises her he’ll be back in time.

She watches him get ready to go and she tries to believe him.

In the end, it’s like so many other moments with him, all the little half-truths and white lies that build and build and build until she doesn’t know the lie from the truth anymore.

And she loves him, but she won’t be playing this game anymore.

”Do me a favor. Don’t think I can’t tell when you’re lying,” she says, her voice telegraphing exhaustion she can’t hold back after years of this. ”I don’t know what they did to you, Sam, but whatever it was--”

”Jess, not now.”

”Your brother broke into _my apartment_.”

He gives her a look like he’s stung, and it’s petty and childish but it _is_ her home, it’s her name on the lease and her parents helping with the rent and now there is a man standing in her living room who has twisted Sam up so bad he doesn’t know which way is up, doesn’t know how to tell the truth of how bad it was to the woman he claims to love. Years of history are unspooling in the way he stands, in the way he looks at her tonight, like there are thousands of things more important and he just doesn’t know them yet, but it’s started, she knows something is started now.

”Don’t think I don’t know just because you’ve never told me. Don’t think this isn’t a huge fucking deal, Sam.”

And she knows what she should be doing is standing with him. She knows he needs her, his tether to normal and safe and right and good and everything in between. She knows Dean is bad news, knows Sam ran for a reason.

She’s just tired, that’s all, and she has to look out for herself, doesn’t she?

He leaves and she calls up everyone she knows, one by one, because she’s got to get out of the apartment, she’s got to get somewhere that doesn’t remind her of Sam and how many lies he learned to tell. She’ll spend the weekend with Becky, watch approximately a thousand hours of Gilmore Girls and get sick on popcorn.

She just needs to be around people she isn’t constantly second guessing, whose pasts don’t automatically send her shivering and cringing when she is alone in the dark.

She needs to be around people who tell the truth.

She packs her bag. She needs to do laundry, badly, but she also needs to get the hell out of dodge, and fast. She grabs two pairs of his socks from the drawer and one is heavy. Something is poking out, something dark and square and--

And she doesn’t know what to think, love blooming in her chest like a rose opening up. And she loves him, she does, but will he ever tell her the truth?

She can’t bank on it. But she can keep packing her bag.

 **Prompt was** : Jess is alive, but Sam still went hunting with Dean. Give me Jess POV. From at . I think the part where Jess lives is kind of just inferred.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was: Jess is alive, but Sam still went hunting with Dean. Give me Jess POV. From fic_promptly, a while ago. I think the part where Jess lives is kind of just inferred.


End file.
